XXIV

Seven stared dumbfounded at his daughter as she walked slowly, cautiously into his hospital room. She had grown several inches and gained at least thirty pounds of healthy weight since he had last seen her over two years ago. Her shoulder length auburn hair looked like her mother’s hair. But looking into her fourteen year old face was a little like looking into a mirror when he himself was a teenager.

She was wearing a navy blue sweater, a knee length denim skirt, black tights and blue converse sneakers. Her appearance reminded him of Amy Easton, Destiny and Brock’s wholesome, spiritual daughter. He just hoped and prayed that Mia’s character was also on par with Amy.

“Hi,” Seven squeaked as emotion caused him to choke up. He extended a hand toward her.

“Hi, Daddy,” she replied as she clasped both of her hands on to his. “How are you doing?”

“Well, besides being stabbed a few days ago, I’m doing good. How about you? Are you good?”

She shrugged as she eyed him with a concerned expression. Then she quickly bent down and kissed her father’s cheek.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Seven Sallie said, not liking how quivery his voice sounded.

“Uncle Six drove me,” she said glancing at him. Seven looked at his brother who was standing next to Captain Kirk.

“Oh, Mia,” Seven Sallie said. “This gentleman standing next to your uncle who looks like Moses is Pastor Kirk Samson.”

“Nice to meet you, young lady,” Captain Kirk said with a friendly grin. He was also pleased that someone called him a Moses look a like for once instead of Santa Claus.

“Nice to meet you too, sir,” Mia told him as she stepped toward him and shook hands.

“Very polite and respectful,” Captain Kirk said, impressed. “Are you sure she’s yours, Seven?”

Seven just smiled, and bit his tongue, refraining from a joke that maybe Brock was her father. His ex-wife, a serial adulterous, had left him wondering if Mia was truly his daughter. He had even considered a DNA test at one time. Then he decided he loved his little girl regardless of biology. But now that she was older, looking into her face, he had no doubt about her parentage.

The pastor and Six whispered amongst themselves before Six spoke. “We’re gonna go grab something to drink and let you two have a little privacy.”

Seven didn’t protest. He wanted to know where his daughter stood with her grudge against him. “So, Mia.”

“Mother’s dying,” she interrupted so calmly and matter of fact that Seven wasn’t sure what he had just heard. “She went into hospice yesterday, but she insisted I come see you right away.”

Seven’s brain whirled. “Wait, what? Your mother’s dying? She’s only thirty three.”

“She has stage four ovarian cancer, and it’s spread. They told her last week that she only has a month or two to live. Not long after she found out it was terminal, she confessed that she lied to me.”

“Lied to you?” Seven repeated slowly, dumbfounded.

“Yes,  right before I turned twelve, she told me that you had cheated on her several times, and that’s why your marriage ended. That’s the reason I told you I didn’t want to see you anymore. Then a couple days before she went into hospice, she confessed it was she and not you that was the adulterer.  Daddy, I’m so very sorry!”

Suddenly her calm demeanor disappeared and she burst into tears. He took hold of her hand and pulled her toward him. “It’s okay, honey.”

Seven marveled at how quickly he just nonchalantly brushed it off. His daughter’s rejection was the most painful experience of his life, dwarfing the heartache of his marriage dissolution a few years earlier. Was it because his ex-wife was dying? Was it because he was so exited that his little girl had just reentered his life? Was it because he had nearly died just days earlier?

“No, it’s not!” she sobbed. “Going to parks and hiking and biking with you are the happiest memories of my life, and mother just sabotaged it all over petty jealousies. We can never get that time back.”

“Maybe not, but we have the rest of our lives.”

“Are you angry?”

Seven looked away from her and seemed to concentrate on the ceiling. “We all make mistakes. We’re all prone to selfishness and insecurity. The book of Jerimiah in the Bible says, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who…”

“Who can know it?” His daughter finished.

Seven looked at his daughter with surprise. She smiled wistfully and swiped at a stray tear. “You’re reminding me of the daddy I remember as a little girl.”

He gazed at his daughter, his little girl. But she wasn’t so little anymore. She was now closer to womanhood than the small child who was so gleeful at riding a bike without training wheels for the first time. He hated to ask, but had to. “What do you mean by how I was when you were a little girl?”

“You know, before you and mother divorced. When you weren’t so, so angry and sarcastic. Before you began evolving into the Seven Sallie Showdown person.”

“You don’t like my podcast?”

She shook her head. “I mean, I see why people do. You make great observations and you’re funny, I guess. But I just don’t like the dark atmosphere you portray.”

“I’ve recently been thinking about changing it,” Seven told her.

“For real?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, how?”

“That’s the tricky part,” He said with a shrug and then winced at the pain the movement caused.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he croaked and then squirmed around to get comfortable. “I’ve been, I don’t know, changing, reforming since I came down to Iowa.”

“Uncle Six said you’ve been down here over a month. So did you come down here as, like, some type of drinking or drug rehab?”

“Not intentionally.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I was getting several death threats.”

“I know, isn’t that why you were stabbed?”

“Actually, no. The knife wounds were intended for a friend of mine.”

“So you were at the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“It might appear that way. But if I hadn’t been there to help, she likely would have been killed.”

“Wow.”

“Anyhow, about the death threats. So some experts, my cousin Brock being one of them, assured me that I should take the threats seriously. So, Brock invited me to stay with him and his wife here in Iowa and lay low for a while.”

“How long of a while?”

“I don’t know. After the first week I was here, I was ready to bolt back to the Twin Cities. But now I’m liking it here for various reasons.”

“Is the lady you helped one of them?”

“I suppose she’s a small part of it. But let me be clear. We are just friends, nothing more.”

His daughter smirked, but then nodded. “Can I ask you something, Daddy?”

“Of course, honey.”

“Would you be able to come see M other?”

“Ah, I, um, don’t think she would want that.”

“I think she would.”

“She said so?”

“Well, no.”

“Then how would you know?”

“Women’s intuition,” she said with a shrug.

Seven’s mouth hung open and his eyes were wide. Did his little girl really have such a thing as women’s intuition? Could he stand to see his ex-wife? His adulterous, lying former spouse who had damaged years of his relationship with his daughter. What happened to the forgiving attitude he was exhibiting just moments ago?

“Please,” she drawled. This girl on the verge of womanhood pleaded with her father using her five year old eyes.

“Okay,” Seven heard himself say.